Aerial Death Trap
by Ashvarden
Summary: Point Blank AU. How would events have changed if Wolf was a bit quicker at saving Alex from Mrs. Stellenbosch? Here's a few hints: Blood is spilled, Wolf's flying phobia gets a chance to rear its ugly head, and Mars bars are crushed.
1. Chapter 1

AN: Part one of two here.

* * *

It took a certain level of experience – not to mention a healthy dose of gut instinct – to recognize the cut-off point between playing nice and protecting your own. SAS Lieutenant James Galindez, aka Wolf, had always been excellent at identifying that line.

He was seeing it now.

MI6 had issued strict orders to keep collateral damage to a minimum, but damn it, he wasn't a miracle worker. If protecting his men and ensuring the success of the rescue mission meant a body count, there'd damn well have to be one; so, he wasted no time on inner conflict when his first sight upon slamming the door open involved Eva Stellenbosch making a bloody, violent mockery of The Line.

His gaze flickered from Stellenbosch's raised gun to Cub, who was scrabbling at the fingers gripping his throat, face flushed with exertion.

Seeing that beast of a woman strangling Cub would've been plenty, but the drawn weapon sealed it. Sparing no time for hesitation, Wolf hefted his gun (much preferable to the anesthetic darts, which were like carrying a slingshot to a gunfight) and fired three bullets into her back.

Red spattered the floor and wall as she staggered and dropped to all fours. She made a weak movement as if to lift the gun, but Alex had the presence of mind to stamp on her hand and kick it out of reach.

Stellenbosch choked once, twice – a wet, nasty gurgle of a sound – and went limp amidst a spreading lake of blood.

Approaching, Wolf nudged her in the ribs with his boot. She didn't so much as twitch.

Satisfied, he stepped over her prone form on his way to Alex, who sat slumped against the wall, massaging his throat. His eyes were locked on the blood, watching it soak into the carpet like spilled punch.

"Gonna be alright?" Wolf grunted, offering him a hand up. His gaze lingered on the shadows marring Alex's neck. Five reddened imprints; no doubt it would bruise spectacularly.

"I've had worse," Alex rasped out.

Wolf didn't like the sound of that. Now was no time for an interrogation, though – they still had a threat to neutralize and a bunch of brats to haul to safety.

Gunfire cracked somewhere above, as if to punctuate his thoughts. A body plummeted past the window. Its ghostly uniform – cold weather camo – looked sickeningly familiar.

Where . . . ? The roof, it had to be. Hadn't Alex mentioned a helipad up there?

"Shit," Wolf breathed, and bolted for the door.

He was halfway down the hall before he realized he didn't know the way. He whipped around to ask Alex, mouth open to shout, and almost ended up braining the teenager with his assault rifle instead.

"This way!" Alex shot past, trailing a line of bloody boot-prints.

Wolf sprinted after him, adding 'quick on the uptake' to his growing mental list. The teen hadn't wasted precious time asking for a destination. No spy worth their salt would've needed to.

Maybe Double-O-Nothing wasn't a nothing after all.

* * *

A stairway, a door, a deserted hall. More stairs, these ascending to a trapdoor in the ceiling. On the other side he heard the growl of an engine and the all-too-familiar thwack of blades splitting air. Wolf held no fondness for helicopters, but this one he found particularly distasteful. If he didn't stop it, the target would escape. He couldn't let that happen, not when he was so close to fulfilling the objective.

Alex started to climb, but Wolf yanked him back. "Me first," he instructed curtly. "Unless you'd rather be a sacrificial lamb?"

"Not particularly."

"Sure seems like it," Wolf grumbled, grabbing hold of the handle. "It's a firefight and you don't even have a bloody weapon!"

"Not for lack of trying," Alex retorted, but he stepped aside and let Wolf take point.

Crouched low and weapon at the ready, Wolf hefted the door up one-handed. He almost dropped it again when a bullet pinged off the ceiling to his left. SAS training had hard-wired survival reflexes into him, though, and he jammed his gun barrel through the gap between door and ceiling without a moment's pause. He picked off the man who'd fired, and then a second, with lightning efficiency.

The cracks of his weapon firing were almost fully outstripped by the deafening rumble of the helicopter's engine and blades. It was still powering up, he noted – the blades didn't sound as if they were at full speed.

Wolf shouldered the door wide and sprang up, scanning his surroundings quickly before sprinting towards the helicopter. Two bodies – both victims of Wolf's trigger finger – littered the rooftop, but no SAS. As expected; the man he'd stationed up here lay in a snowbank four stories below, probably with a neat bullet hole through his head.

A shot thumped against the open trapdoor behind him. He tracked its source to the cockpit, where a bald man with tinted glasses was attempting to flip switches and aim his weapon at the same time.

Wolf returned fire. One, two, three shots. All close but not close enough. The wind from the rotors was wreaking havoc on his aim.

Grief directed one last parting shot in their direction, literally, and Alex narrowly avoided it as he emerged from the trapdoor. Then Grief dropped his weapon in favor of manning the controls, and something changed in the engine's sound quality. With a growing sense of horror, Wolf saw the runners begin to rise from the surface of the helipad.

He let out a stream of increasingly foul language, switching his aim to the rotors instead. Not enough time, not enough time!

A small blur darted past him, traversing the roof with startling speed, and Wolf barely had time to register Alex's presence before the teen caught hold of the nearest runner – still only at waist height, as Grief was proving himself an unpracticed pilot – and scrambled into the cargo hold.

No no no no_ oh fucking hell__** no**_**.**

The prospect of jumping aboard a helicopter steered by a madman was horrifying. Wolf had never failed a mission, though, and he couldn't stomach the thought of butchering his record with_ this._ Besides, the kid was already up there.

Nothing else for it - he would have to follow.

No time to hesitate. The chopper's belly was head-high and still rising. Shit._ Shit._ He bolted across the roof and lunged at the nearest running board, barely flinging his arms 'round it in time. He scrambled to hook a leg over the runner before it picked up too much speed and height.

Skin-crawling terror enveloped him as the chopper cleared the rooftop and veered off towards the ski jump. Fifty feet of open air separated him from the ground, certain death imminent if he lost his grip or miscalculated even a titch.

He froze then, hugging the cold metal like a koala would a tree, lungs tight and heart jackhammering in his chest.

A hand seized his forearm from above, offering leverage, and he used it to heave himself upright and stand atop the runner. From there, it was a simple (albeit slightly frantic) process to crawl through the cargo door, grasping that hand like the lifeline it was.

He sprawled on the cargo area floor, still gasping for air, and met Alex's adrenaline-bright eyes. The boy seemed surprised at his presence; he likely hadn't figured on Wolf making a leap-of-faith onto his least favorite object with a motor. Wolf had privately coined all helicopters "aerial death traps" and Alex was well aware of this animosity.

No time to think about that now.

Wolf ruthlessly quashed the creeping terror which threatened to immobilize him. Instead, he ejected his empty gun clip, traded in for a fresh one, and rolled to his knees. He spared a glance at Alex – crouched, rummaging through the cargo nets for a weapon – before edging his way towards the front.

Grief, unfortunately, had taken note of his unwanted passengers. He angled his gun backwards and fired blindly, sending half a dozen bullets ricocheting around the cargo area. Alex ducked behind a wooden supply crate and, though he was peppered by splinters, didn't suffer any additional injuries.

Wolf wasn't so fortunate. A fiery line of pain jagged through his right thigh, and when he looked down blood had already begun to spider along the inside seam of his white fatigues. The wound looked perilously close to his crotch, but everything important felt like it was still intact. He'd sure as hell've noticed_ that_.

This was no time to inspect or treat the injury, but the lack of breath-hitching agony or gushing fountains of blood led him to believe that it wasn't life-threatening. Ignoring the red beads dotting the floor and the trickle of wet, sticky blood down his thigh, he returned fire.

This time, the bullet clipped Grief. It had to've; there was no other explanation for the sudden shudder as the chopper rocked to the left, throwing Wolf off-balance. He landed on his back with surprising force and let out an involuntary grunt of pain. That was all he had time for before he realized he was sliding, still on his back, towards the wide open door – and beyond, hundreds of feet of nothing.

He latched onto a seat just in time. Both shoulders protested with twin stabs of pain as his body wrenched to a halt.

Numerous small debris avalanched past him. Gloves, a length of yellow nylon rope, boxes of spare ammunition. A coffee mug smacked him in the face as it tumbled past. One of his feet, scrabbling at open air in the hopes of finding purchase, sent it on a brief upward trajectory before it plummeted to shatter in the forest below.

The chopper bobbed again, then tilted at a thirty degree angle. Absurdly, Wolf wondered if this was what a buoy felt like during a storm at sea.

Just then, a policeman's-issue flashlight whipped through the air and slammed into the back of Grief's head._ Kid's a good shot_, he might've noted with approval if he weren't clutching the seat for dear life, too disoriented to think much more than** fuck, fuck,****_ fuck!_**

The chopper jerked repeatedly, swerving to the right, left, right, down. Then it leveled out for a few seconds. He took advantage of the opportunity to yank himself upright, get behind a seat, and put a bullet through the back of Grief's neck.

Grief slumped forward, blood spouting. His weight tipped the joystick, and the chopper hunched forward like a diving bird of prey.

Wolf slammed into the seat face-first with considerable force, but he ignored the pain. Vaulting the space to the cockpit, he shoved Grief's prone form off the control panel and seized the joystick. He righted them with a sharp yank.

Alex, who'd been rushing forward with the same intent, skidded in the blood pooling near the pilot's seat. He grabbed Wolf's shoulder to catch his balance, prompting another shudder from the helicopter.

Wolf opened his mouth to snarl a warning, but by then Alex had already released him and careened into the co-pilot's seat. More blood pumped sluggishly from Grief's decimated jugular, streaking across Alex's boots.

While Alex was preoccupied with avoiding Grief's bodily fluids, Wolf was focusing on a bigger issue. He gazed out through the blood-speckled cockpit window. Nothing looked familiar, and the tracks visible ahead of them were tiny, like a toy train set. How had they gotten so far so quickly?

The landscape stretched out beyond the tracks, lightly sloped now that the majority of the mountain was behind them. Its thick forest and bristling underbrush might have been breathtaking at another time – possibly in multiple ways, if his dislike for heights reared its ugly head again.

Right then, though, all it did was drop the bottom out of his stomach.

There was nowhere to land. They really, really needed somewhere to land - as soon as humanly possible.

"I don't suppose you can fly this bloody thing?" Alex asked, voice tight with stifled panic. The teen seemed to have reached the same conclusion as Wolf. His face, though pale, was remarkably composed.

Wolf notched another mental point for him as he shook his head.

"No. Controls are fucked up, anyway." He jiggled the joystick from left to right to demonstrate, careful to keep it at the same tilt; nothing happened. Turning around was not an option.

Alex's gaze followed his own to the panel above the joystick, where a neat bullet hole had shattered a gauge and severed a number of half-exposed wires. Even as they watched, smoke began to curl up from the damaged area, and a few sparks spat out.

An errant one caught Wolf's wrist, singeing skin and hair. He gritted his teeth and made a concentrated effort not to move his hand. Alex saw the flinch, though, and tugged his hat off, revealing sweaty fair hair. He draped the hat over both Wolf's hand and the joystick - no point in letting it happen again.

He vanished into the rear of the chopper, boots squelching.

"Any parachutes back there?" Wolf called out. The panel sparked again, peppering his jacket sleeve with pinprick-tiny burns. He raised his free hand to his face, brushing at the wetness trailing down his forehead. His sleeve came away smeared red.

"No!" Alex's reply was almost drowned out by the engine, the quality of which had shifted from a growl to a sickly, rattling whine. Wolf swore quietly. Even if he'd known how to land the damn thing and could find a convenient open field, they probably wouldn't make it to the ground without turning themselves into a giant fireball.

Something clattered in the back. He craned his neck, but Alex's body blocked his view. Items - what hadn't tumbled out during the firefight - started to pile up on the floor as Alex discarded them one by one.

Finally, long after Wolf had grown impatient (and increasingly nervous, owing to the engine's declining state of health), the teen returned with a length of thick rope. It looked strong enough to hold their weight, but the prospect of dangling from a wrecked helicopter on a rope didn't inspire much more optimism than dying in a fiery crash.

"Take us in low," Alex instructed. He knelt to tie the rope around a hand-hold by the rear door, securing it as tightly as possible. He knotted a small tool box to the end as an anchor and lowered it down. Then he picked something up, trampled over the detritus on the floor to reach Wolf, and presented him with a roll of duct tape.

They both wrapped their hands to minimize rope burns, saving a couple feet for the joystick.

A tense pause hung in the air before Alex took a steadying breath and said, "Okay, do it now."

Wolf angled them lower and lower until they were skimming above the treetops. Then he eased the speed lever down, praying all the while that it actually_ was_ the speed lever and not the radio volume or something equally useless.

He held the joystick steady while Alex taped it into place. Then he gingerly released it, and when they didn't go into a sudden nose dive, he exhaled the breath he'd been holding.

Alex accepted his hat back and crammed it on as they exited the cockpit and gathered round the doorway, crouching. Wolf picked up the rope and rolled it between his fingers, jaw clenched tight. An irregular patter of red drops dotted the floor beneath him, evidence that his thigh was not coping well with the constant jostling.

"You first," Alex insisted. The tilt of his chin exuded stubbornness on a level Wolf had only ever seen in his own family. The Galindez's were legendary for their tenacity, and their arguments even more-so. Now wasn't the time to be surprised that the kid had guts, though. The chopper gave another shudder, its engine sputtering ominously.

Wolf darted a glance below and swore. It came out strangled. This wasn't how he wanted to go out. He'd never expected a particularly long life, but twenty-eight was still too early for his tastes. Images of the ground rushing up to meet him, visible through the cockpit's bloody glass, flooded his mind, but still he couldn't move. His boots felt nailed to the floor.

He tried to hood the desperation in his eyes when he turned to Alex, but judging from the boy's face, he didn't manage it.

"Push me," he blurted.

Alex visibly wavered. Kicking a parachute-clad, healthy soldier out of a plane was one thing . . . but shoving an injured man, paralyzed with fear, whose survival relied on his ability to keep a tight grip on the rope? That was practically murder.

"For God's sakes, Cub. Fucking_ push me_!" he snarled, fists clenching convulsively on the rope.

Brief hesitation, and then -

"I'm sorry." Alex slammed a hand into the gap between his shoulder blades. Wolf overbalanced and pitched forward, his breath frozen in panic.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Okay, I lied. This is apparently going to be a three-parter...

* * *

Wolf floundered for a single terrifying second. Then, purely on instinct, his legs curled around the rope and he began to inch himself down hand over hand. The bullet wound on his thigh throbbed with every movement, rubbing raw and wet against the frayed line. The farther he traveled, the more frequently his hands closed on red-splotched rope.

Halfway down, he glanced up and was met with the soles of Alex's boots; the boy was following only a couple feet above him. He continued to descend, forcing himself on even as his joints and muscles burned and blood painted an itchy, trickling trail from thigh to ankle.

Tree limbs smacked his body and face as he descended past the tree line, still clipping along at a decent pace under the helicopter's power. Every branch stung like a whip.

He rushed the last couple dozen feet, and then he was out of rope. Wolf had assumed he'd feel relieved when he reached the bottom. In reality, it was quite the opposite; ten feet to go, and no painless way to get there.

Well, there was nothing for it.

He pried his hands free of the rope and let gravity take him. Without the layer of snow that blanketed the ground up-slope, his landing was a rough one. It was made even rougher by Alex falling on him a moment later.

"Blooding fucking _fuck_ -" Wolf choked, hunching in on himself automatically. He couldn't decide which body part to clutch first when Alex rolled clear – his throbbing head, the sun-burst pain blanketing his left ribcage, or his thigh, where blood still streamed like spilled paint, saturating his ghost camo.

As with most decisions he made, visual evidence took precedence. He opted for the leg. Wolf pressed a palm over the wound to slow the exodus of blood. Within moments red squelched between his fingers, staining the skin.

Alex, noticing his predicament, yanked his hat off again and tossed it over. "For your leg," he explained when the soldier raised a questioning eyebrow. "It's kind of . . . geisering blood there."

Wolf snorted. Blunt, but true. "Thanks, Cub." He balled the scratchy hat up against the wound and held it there with one hand while he rummaged through his vest with the other, hunting for medical supplies.

It was simple enough to dig out a handful of alcohol swabs, pressure bandages, and other miscellaneous bits of gear. Alex cocked an eyebrow at the dental floss, spare change, and now-crushed Mars bar mixed in with the necessities. "Got the kitchen sink in there, too?" he quipped.

Wolf just grunted in reply as he swabbed the wound, teeth gritted against the burning sensation it caused. He could feel Alex's gaze on him, taking note of his shaking hands and the tense line of his shoulders.

"Is the bullet still in there?" Alex asked, crouching next to him to get a closer look.

"Yeah. Wasn't a clean-through shot," he replied as he pressed gauze against the bullet hole and wrapped the whole mess, crisscrossing the roll several times for equal distribution of pressure. "Not gonna risk taking it out, either." He wiped his bloody hands on a clean patch of fabric near his ankle - it looked especially gruesome covered in palm-sized streaks of gore.

"What now?" Alex's voice held a tight, controlled calm. God, but the kid was strange. Any normal teenager stranded in the frozen wilderness with a bleeding, possibly concussed companion should've been freaking out. Alex, however, seemed to be holding up remarkably well.

"Wolf?"

He jerked, raising his eyes to meet Alex's concerned gaze. Right, he'd asked a question. Wolf dredged up all the winter survival trivia he could remember. They needed heat, light, and shelter. "Well . . . first off, let's get a fire going. We should gather wood."

"I've got it," Alex offered, shooting his leg a dubious glance.

Wolf gritted his teeth. Pride surged up, willing him to protest, but he batted it down forcefully. What would be the point? So he could stagger about the woods, wobbling like an invalid?

He watched Alex go, a white blot against the darkness of the surrounding trees. As soon as the kid was out of sight and earshot, he voiced the pained whimper he'd been fighting viciously to keep in. He drew his knees up despite the pain and tucked his hands into the pocket of space between stomach and thighs. Shivers wracked his body; blood loss, sweat-damp clothing, and the frigid climate were combining to take their toll.

Alex returned about five minutes later, lugging an armload of branches and uprooted scrub brush. He arranged it in a rough pile near the center of their tiny "camp", for lack of a better term, and then vanished again.

As Alex's form faded into the trees, Wolf heaved himself upright and stood. He hobbled over to the pile and sank down before his legs had a chance to buckle – blood loss was making him light-headed. He swiped a trickle of blood from his cheek. It'd been streaking down the bridge of his nose, previously unnoticed.

Leaning closer, he examined the brush. It was dry – good. The bigger fire they could get going, the better. The wreckage of the chopper would attract the rescue team's main focus, but their bodies would be noted as missing and other signs of life would soon be investigated.

He riffled through his pockets for matches and struck up a flame in the dry tinder. From there he coaxed a tiny, reluctant fire to life. He added a few pieces of bark and brush at a time until he had a respectable blaze going. Satisfied, Wolf held his hands close to the flame; his gloves were lying abandoned back at Point Blanc, and right about now he was sincerely wishing he'd kept them on.

Footsteps crunched behind him, amplified by the still night air, and Alex dropped another armful of wood to the ground beside him.

"Wish we had some greenery," Wolf remarked, shifting and wincing as he reached for a couple extra branches to layer on top of the fire. "This won't get us much smoke."

"I'll see what I can find." Alex held his hand out, a silent request. Without a word, Wolf slipped his combat knife free and tossed it to him handle-first.

Alex trudged away through the brush, rustling and snapping branches, and Wolf scrawled yet another mental note. Had the kid received any stealth training? Quiet didn't matter right now, but it should've been ingrained enough for Alex to creep around like a burglar on reflex. This kid was quiet in a hallway, but out in nature he was definitely no ghost.

Alex returned a bit later with a dozen sawed-off evergreen boughs. The needles, still a lush, dark green, would produce plenty of smoke.

"Think this'll last until morning?" Alex tipped his head, indicating the pile of limbs, scrub, and prickly boughs.

Wolf appraised the supply and nodded. It was better than he had any right to expect under the circumstances. "Yeah, should be fine. Cut a few more to lay down, though. It'll be warmer than sleeping on the ground."

Alex nodded mutely. As he stood to go, Wolf turned his attention to the boughs already collected. With one armed curled protectively around his ribs, he laid two separate pallets near the fire: two boughs deep, three across, and four down. Lucky neither of them were particularly tall. It made for less work.

He huddled on the pallet to the right, facing the fire. An errant gust of wind sent a shiver down his spine, and he tensed, biting down a groan at the stab of agony it caused. Even after the tension passed, the pain lingered. He focused on his breathing, hoping shallow, measured inhales and exhales would keep his ribs from shifting too much.

When Alex returned he tossed his load of boughs on the pile, then settled on the second pallet without a word. Firelight shone on his fair hair and illuminated the lines of fatigue creasing his face. He looked tired and washed-out, not that Wolf had any right to criticize. He probably looked twice as bad.

Quiet enveloped them for a few minutes, as if the cold, heavy night air blanketed all sound.

A particularly vicious gust of wind had the flames guttering. Alex swore under his breath, burrowing his face deeper into the neck of his jacket, and Wolf did his best to curl up even smaller on his pallet. Needles and twigs snapped and prodded him from below – what little he could feel of his chilled limbs, anyway. Was it worth the extra discomfort to have some insulation and another thin layer of "padding"? It sure as hell didn't seem like it. The smell was nice, though. He'd always liked the woods despite (or perhaps because of) growing up in a string of run-down city apartments.

Wolf shifted restlessly, hoping to settle the majority of his weight on his right side. His thigh throbbed like a bitch, but the ribs made it difficult to breathe when he lay on his left side. Discomfort all around, but so long as he could find somewhere else to direct his focus, he'd cope. "So, kid . . . tell me about yourself."

"Why?"

"Humor me, Cub. If I sleep I could fall into a coma and fucking_ die_. Besides, I'd rather not freeze to death." He rubbed a careful thumb across the gash on his forehead, his reminder that a sleepless night was, in fact, the better option.

"Shit." It was just now occurring to the kid that resting tonight was a pipedream.

"So . . ."

"So what?"

"You never answered my question."

"There's not much to tell," Alex replied tersely.

He found the boy's reticence odd. What normal teenager passed up a chance to complain about their life? Wasn't puberty jam-packed with woe-is-me self-centeredness? All of his sisters had certainly been that way, and with random crying jags to boot.

"Come on, kid, don't bullshit me. I bet you've got a few interesting stories squirreled away."

"Fine," Alex sighed, giving in. "Eye for an eye?"

Wolf hummed in reluctant agreement. In retrospect, discussing family – especially his own – had been a bad choice of topic. "Fair enough." The silence stretched long enough that he knew he would have to jump-start the conversation again. Craning his neck to see the kid's face, he asked, "What're they like?"

"I don't really have one. I live with Jack, my housekeeper, but she's not the parental type."

"Too strict?" he guessed.

"The opposite, actually. She's like a sister to me." Alex's lips quirked into a faint smile, probably the first real one he'd ever seen from the boy. Brecon Beacons sucked happiness like a leech, and Wolf had been too pissed off at the perceived insult of being saddled with the kid to do anything but magnify its effects.

"Damn, Cub. Y'know, I had you pegged for a rich kid being punished by Daddy. Guess I should never become a spy, eh?" The silence stretched. Awkwardly, he asked, "I suppose you want to hear about me now?"

Alex smirked. "You promised. Eye for an eye, Wolf."

"I've got a big family. Four sisters, no brothers. I'm the youngest. My mother's Puerto Rican – that's the accent." He massaged absently at the skin stretched taut over his ribs. He could feel the bruises forming and had little doubt that they would color spectacularly. By the end of this ordeal, he'd be resembling an over-ripe peach instead of just feeling like one.

"And your father?"

"Elisa says he was English."

Alex, thankfully, ignored the obvious question in favor of another. "Elisa?"

"Sister," Wolf grunted. He shifted his weight again, triggering a hiss. Through the tangle of branches overhead, he could see a multitude of stars dotting the night sky. If their circumstances hadn't been so dire, it might've been peaceful. Voice tight, he continued, "She's batty but well-meaning . . . most of the time."

Alex, who'd been eyeing his ginger movements with suspicion, said, "Something else is wrong with you, isn't it." His tone was laced with accusation.

"It's nothing."

"Bullshit," was Alex's prompt reply. He sat upright on his pallet, the firelight glinting eerily on his fair hair.

"Seriously, Cub, I'll be fine." He forced as much optimism into the words as he could, despite feeling a distinct lack of 'fine'.

Alex, however, didn't look reassured. "Bollocks. You're about to snuff it, aren't you?"

Wolf choked on a laugh at the kid's bluntness. Bad idea – he immediately dropped a hand to his midriff, crushing his lip between his teeth to hold in a groan. He'd ducked his head to hide the pain that spiked through his expression, and didn't notice Alex's reaction until careful fingertips had begun to prod his side. He flinched and curled in on himself like a caterpillar, batting the hand away.

"Do they feel broken?" Alex persisted. "How about internal bleeding?"

"No and no," Wolf said, squeezing the words past his clenched jaw. "Cracked, maybe. Hard to tell."

Alex nodded, seeming to finally accept his words as truth, and they lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. The conversation window, it seemed, had just slammed shut.

* * *

An hour later, Wolf had graduated from uncomfortable to miserable.

Freezing wind chilled him even through his thick jacket. He'd been plenty warm while skiing and creeping around the compound, but lying motionless so as to not aggravate his injuries generated very little warmth. Alex seemed to be suffering from the same dilemma – he'd huddled in on himself, arms crossed tight, breath puffing in the air like cigarette smoke.

When he lifted his head (for the eighth time) to check that the kid hadn't frozen to death, their eyes caught. A long, awkward pause ensued, before Alex cleared his throat and, quite plainly steeling himself, sat up. Wolf watched with trepidation as the boy grabbed his pile of boughs and rearranged them directly beside Wolf.

That trepidation bloomed into mild horror as Alex lay down behind him and edged closer. "Cub?" he choked out, voice an octave higher than he'd ever admit to, as knees bumped up against the backs of his thighs. "What the fuck?"

"I'm bloody freezing, and you're even worse off," Alex said. "Which seems worse to you - dying a slow and awful death, or sharing your body heat for a few hours?"

"Death isn't sounding so bad right about now," Wolf grumbled in response as the kid settled against his back, forearms nudging tense shoulder blades. He didn't try to shove the kid away, though, which spoke volumes about the seriousness of his condition.

"Don't worry, Wolf. I'll leave your virtue intact."

That garnered another rib-jarring snort. "Oh, good. I was concerned about that."

They both lapsed into silence. This one, though, reached a whole seperate dimension of awkward.

"If anybody asks, this never happened," Wolf growled after a long moment.

"Agreed," Alex muttered, hot breath whuffing against the back of Wolf's neck.


End file.
